This episode of the Fundraising Elevator podcast was recorded live at the 2024 Elevate Conference. So please welcome, please welcome to the stage co-hosts Samantha Swaim and Kristen Steele with special guests Kelly Russell of Artisan Auctions and Zarek Samples, CEO of the Coastal Empire Habitat for Humanity in Savannah, Georgia. Welcome. Thank you. Everyone's mic on? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. We have mics. Good morning. Well, hello and welcome to the Fundraising Elevator where we're all head
ed up. We are so excited to be doing a live podcast recording from the Elevate Conference. Thank you all for joining us. About two months ago, three months ago now, maybe two months ago, we saw a little social media clip that captured our attention and at an event that just looked like an amazing love bomb. And we thought if we're all headed up together, this is an elevator we want to be on and we want to make sure that we are joining hands and talking to the incredible Zarek Samples to learn ho
w his event came to be, what he's doing with his event. So we reached out, invited Zarek here today and joining Zarek is Kelly Russell. The two of them met at Elevate five years ago. Zarek has been growing his event in tremendous ways since and we wanted to invite him here to be able to share with us the successes that they've had, the path that they've been on and so thank you both for joining us. Happy to be here. So glad to be here. Yeah, it's gonna be fun. I'm excited. Kristin, let's do a fo
rmal introduction of our guest today. Zarek Samples is the CEO of the Coastal Empire Habitat for Humanity in Savannah, Georgia. He serves in the Rotary Club, Savannah JC's MuFi chapter of Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, say that a couple of times, Chamber of Commerce and Hope City Church. He was named Georgia Southern University's 40 Under 40. Recently, he was awarded the Community Hero Award from Robert Civic Engineering, Savannah Chamber of Commerce's Gulfstream Community Involvement Award and the G
reater Black Chamber of Commerce Nonprofit of the Year. He states, "My ultimate goal is to be an advocate for my community, helping people help themselves and each other." Kelly Russell is an expert auction strategist and certified benefit auctioneer who has helped organizations raise over 200 million in support of their great work. With 18 years of profitable auctions behind her, Kelly's passion is coaching non-profit organizations and schools on how to maximize their revenue while eliminating
wasted time and effort. Kelly and her team are dedicated to one mission, powerful fundraising for positive change. And when not fundraising, she loves a good game night. Love it. Zarek, big question to kick us off for you. This has been a five-year journey. You went from a negative net in your first event with then Community Action to 25 grand to 100 grand to $110,000 in a new role at an organization during a pandemic to $175,000 this year. That's what I'm talking about. You have just continued
to grow what's possible for your fundraising events. How are you doing it? A lot of work, a lot of prayer, and a lot of people. What I believe is that no man is an island. You can't do this thing by yourself. And I truly believe that in order for you to raise funds, you first must raise fans. And so because when you can foster a committee of people to carry that same drink, the care that same vision, I call it drinking the Kool-Aid. Once I give you a couple Kool-Aid, you're like, "Oh my God, thi
s is the best Kool-Aid ever. I got to share it with my friends." And so now your friend is drinking that Kool-Aid. And so now you have a gala committee and every committee person has a group of people that are designated to help do a specific purpose. So raising fans to raise funds. I love that. Well, that just speaks to stewardship, relationships, building relationships. You have told me that your room is full of friends, that you do a lot of outreach to your community. But Kelly, you've notice
d that stewardship is the top of Zarek's secret sauce. Can you talk to me a little bit about what you've witnessed in his stewardship and his donor cultivation? Yeah, I think something that's really important to know is that when Zarek, when you raise a fan, it's less of a fan and more of a family. Everyone is family to you. Everyone there is so excited to not only engage with Zarek, but to engage with each other. They are a very tight-knit community. They love each other. They support each othe
r. And I think that that is part of your secret. Yeah, talking about the community, it's not just when you're passionate about something, you understand that there's so many different organizations that helps that particular family. Yeah. And yeah, I may be working on affordable housing, but somebody else may be working on health or somewhere may be working on social justice. And you understand that all these organizations working together to make this family first whole and then making whole fa
milies make whole communities. And so when you are supporting other individuals, whether it's a happy hour or it's a fundraising event or it's just a symposium or it's an annual meeting, being in the room, being present, people know who you are and you know who they are and figuring out how you can work together in that community really starts it all. And that's the stewardship part that I wanted to talk about is that it's not about just, I'm showing up to this event because I wanted to come to
my event, no investing what they have going on. So they were truly investing what you have going on. You know, we had a group of CEOs, I'm going a little off script here for a second. Shocking. We had a group of CEOs in the nonprofit sector that we were working with that started showing up for each other's events where they started a collaboration in which at every event that their organization was hosting, they had a table that they reserved for the other CEOs. And they started naming and calli
ng out that those CEOs were in the room because what they realized was that they shared a similar donor base and that instead of it being competition, they shifted the mindset from scarcity to abundance and they started showing up in such a big way that all of the donors noticed and exponentially their fundraising increase. So I want to talk about that just a little bit. Yeah. Because of the donor base now, right, they want to see collaborations. Yeah. So I have a good friend, Katrina Boston, wh
o's a CEO for Family Promise. And she's working on homelessness, homeless families. So everywhere that I go, I'm bringing her with me. George C. Burrows, he's the CEO for Citizens Advocacy. And so he's working on rights for those individuals who don't know necessarily how to advocate for themselves. The three, the four of us, the Soup Kitchen, with Ms. Camryn, her name right now, but we travel together. We always support each other's events because we understand that we're not an island. We're n
ot one organization by themselves. And so when you see a lot of applications these days, they're asking about who you're collaborating with. Yeah. Because donors and philanthropists understand that just by funding your organization is not going to help the greater good. Not an island. That is such an important element. I think so often the nonprofit sector thinks from this place of scarcity of I have to compete or that's my donor or we're edging. And really, the idea of the nonprofit sector is t
hat we are a community supporting community. I mean, regardless of our missions, right? And so that collaboration is just it's palpable. You can see it at your events. Yeah. And I think that that piece of my donor, while you're messing with my donor, when really the opportunity is to see that you're tapping into the personal mission of that donor and how can we work together to amplify that donor's impact on the community for the thing they care about. Because donors have more capacity than we t
hink, right? If we get this donor to give $1,000 every year, there was like, oh, that's my thousand dollars. Well, we don't know what kind of family foundation they may be backing. Then we don't know what kind of other friends or collaborative partners that they work with. And if that donor understands our mission and our vision, and if they carry it and start drinking a Kool-Aid, they're going to make sure everybody around them is drinking that same Kool-Aid and they're going to compel people t
o say, listen, you got to come to the habitat event. You got to go to family promise. You got to figure out how to connect with these people who are doing good in the community. Agreed. And y'all heard it first. When Kool-Aid comes calling for a sponsorship, Zerk's going to be on the commercial. So Zerk, let's talk a little bit more about this event specifically. We have a little clip we'd like to share with everybody. Avie, can we roll that video? [APPLAUSE] That's a room of people, if I unders
tand it correctly, who literally just left their wallets on the table for you. And that's still what the room looked like. So Zerk, talk to us about what's going on in that moment. Savannah, Georgia is turning out for Zerk. So I have this big thing that I don't like to get on the stage and speak until the very end. And unfortunately, Kelly pulls me up there every time and I got to quiet the crowd. Because when you go to family reunions, you're not sitting premium proper. I don't care what you go
t on. When you come to my events, you're family. And so people are like, oh, I hadn't seen you in so long. So my MC is trying to get on quiet. And Candace is like, OK, we got some important information. And then Candace is like, come on. So Zerk, you got to come up here. Because the second he steps on the stage, he's so respected by that community that everyone goes, oh, yes, sir. What do we what do we need to do? And they get quiet. They get quiet because they respect you so much. And so but I
always I like to close the I like to close the event every year. And it's because I want you to understand that I am grateful for everything that happened that night. And so that moment that you saw just a moment ago, as I as I was talking about, that the blessings that you've given out is going to be returned to you 30, 60, 100 fold. And I told people, I said that each of you guys are now connected to Habitat for Humanity. And so I said, if you are a staff member, I want you to come to the danc
e floor. I said, if you're a board member, I want you to come to the dance floor. I said, if you're a donor, I want you to come to the dance floor. I said, if you are someone who's who's given something in kind, I want you to come to the dance floor. And I said, I want you guys to understand. So by the time you saw this video, everybody had left their seats and was on a 320 people were on the dance floor. And I said, understand that this night would not be possible without each and every one of
you all. And I was like, I declared and that's when tears start rolling. I was like, I need you to survive. Like our organization cannot survive off of you when you understand that the economy of Habitat for Humanity, we take community resources, community volunteers, community relations and build affordable homes for families who need it. And I was like, I need you to survive. We can't do our work unless you do your part and give it to the community. And so before we knew it, we had a huge circ
le and it was a diverse circle. That's the thing that I want you to understand. One person came up to me. She was like, Zara, I've never been at an event of this caliber with so many different nationalities, so many different people, so many whatever you it was all kind of people in the room. You see what I'm saying? And so for us all to be there hands in hand, hand in hand, you know, just loving on each other and just remembering that we need each other, this community to survive. And so in tha
t moment, it was as if the entire family finally came together. We let go our political views. We let go color barriers. We let go sexual orientation barriers. We let it all go because we understand that we were there that night for one purpose, which was to make home ownership affordable. And so it just shows that a community can come together. They can rally together. They can make dreams become realities. But it comes at a cost of somebody sacrificing themselves to say, let's do this thing to
gether. You just defined the power of gathering. Absolutely. Beautifully. I want to talk about the diversity of your room, but I want to ask you first about the moment of giving in your room, because we find that regionally and culturally, there are different ways of giving across the United States and Canada. We see a lot of folks that do paddle raises on the East Coast and West Coast. And in middle America, sometimes that's not how folks raise money, but we see that when people adopt it, it ju
st impacts them so much more. You've adopted a paddle raise. Not everyone in Savannah, Georgia does a paddle raise. How did you bring people along? How did you educate your donors? How did you move them to feel like this was something safe to participate in and show up for you in a big way? It was scary. So can we go back five years? Yeah. My CEO at the time, Tres Hamilton, 17 million dollar organization. We ran the Head Start program, the community service block grant, weatherization services f
or nine different counties. Both the Obama administration and the Trump administration had said that they were going to be cutting funds that would directly affect our organization. And you were at community action at the time. I was at community action at the time. Chief development officer at community action. Which we have a lot of community actions that are participating in the conference. Any community actions in the room? Come on, community partnership. But they were, it had been where the
y had said that, you know, basically funding may be cut, gratefully they did not cut the funding. But it did something in her mind, something clicked, it said we need to start diversifying our funding sources. At the time, I think 80, maybe 89 percent of the funding that we had came from federal grants and state block grant funding. And I was brought on to diversify this funding source. So this young guy who just had a lot of energy was going to change the entire world. And I was just like, how
am I going to do that? So I came out of this conference and she was like, Zari, why are you going to Portland for a fundraising conference? It makes no sense at all. And I was like, I don't know, it just feels different. And I said, I'm going to try it. I would like to try it. Initially she told me no. She said that you're traveling all the way across the world. I can't justify that to my board. I said, I tell you what, if I don't raise the amount of money that you feel like I should raise, then
we'll figure out a way to take it out of my paycheck. I had that much faith in this conference. Wow. Had that much faith in this conference. The pressure. I didn't make the money. I did not make the money. But she saw what I was trying to do. And so I told about one of the classes was talking about like, listen, although it may not work the first year, the second year, but that third year, you should start seeing a return on your investment. So like for those individuals who think that, let's s
ee if you can try this. I heard somebody ask a question and say about when do you, when does your budget allow for you to hire an auctioneer or, you know, it does. It's not going to allow it. It's not right. You have to look at the, look at it as an investment first. And that investment is going to come maybe two, maybe three years down the road. But I'm getting off track. Help me stay on track now. But I came, I got the information and I started sharing it and she caught the vision of what you
guys were putting on the elevator. She said, listen, I can't implement it, but I'm going to allow you to do that. And so the first year we literally made negative $6,000, but she understood where we were going. And we went from negative 6,000 to 25 and 25 went to a hundred. And she said, I understand now it's a cultivation of the ownership. It's a cultivation of those folks who you want to, to become a part of your family. Yeah. Did I answer the question? Yeah. But you got, not only did you get
her on board, you got your donors on board. They raised those paddles. You walked into the room probably as an anomaly for folks like an auctioneer on the stage had not been on the stage previously. Right. The paddle raises. That's what the question was about. See, we'll get you back there. We'll get you back there. Thank you. I appreciate it. The paddle raises was something that was not done prior to and, um, folks had never seen this before. They didn't understand what we were doing. Um, and a
lot of people were very hesitant about it. And so that first year people was like, I'm not interested in doing a paddle raise, but the year that we did it, they came to make sure they was like, we missed out on all the fun and we don't want to miss out on this year. And that's how we went from a negative to a positive on our fundraising efforts. And you're right. People were like, what is happening? We shifted the energy in the room in that first year. It was, it was a rough one. We, people wer
e like, what are you doing? What are you asking? Like put your paddle in the air. It'll be fine. It'll be a lot of fun. I promise. But it was, it was, it was, it was culture shift for that area. They had not done that before. But we found, especially second year when we, when we got the pre-commits even stronger that second year, I can't speak to how great that was. We had stronger pre-commits and it was like, okay, this is working now. And it just catapulted. So that was really fun. One of the
things that Kelly coached me on was whatever your fundraising goal is, you need to get at least 50% of that pre-committed and have them planted in the room. Right? So if I know Kelly has the capacity and I'm already your pre-committed gift because Kelly, not good friends, I'm going to raise my paddle for the five. And then I'm going to too. Because we can match each other's energy. You see what I'm saying? So making sure that you plant those people in the room and have at least 50% of your fundr
aising goal pre-committed. So let's, let's talk about pre-commits for a minute. Both, both of you, Kelly, you can sort of attest, attest to this work and what that, how that pays off in the room for you and what you have to do up there. And is there, I'm also wondering if you can talk a little bit about as you were creating that sea change, how did you create that change in those conversations with folks to get them on board with a pre-commit coming into the event? Because I think those are the
conversations we back away from. I'll start while you think. The reality is, is when we have those pre-commits, it creates momentum. And if you, if you're listening to this already, you're going to want to go back to episode 19, which I've been binging and I love this, this podcast, but episode 19 really talks about the special appeal with Samantha Swaim. So the truth is, is if you go out and you get those pre-commits, it creates momentum in your room because people, they want to be a part of it
. And those pre-commits take away the anxiety of being the first paddle in the air. Is anyone going to raise their hand? It takes it all away. It makes it easy for people to go, "Oh, I can do that too. I want to support this." So often we see that when paddles go up, it creates a sense of, "Oh, trust," a sense of excitement, a sense of like, "Oh, this is how you do it." Exactly. And so when you have your pre-commits lined up ready to raise those paddles, you inevitably are teaching people how to
raise it. But if you don't, the pain, because it tells your audience, there's some distrust. No one's giving. Why is no one giving? I'm going to wait to give. Maybe I won't do this. Should I be? Yeah. It's a whole conversation that they have with themselves of, and you want, from the stage, I got a great view because I get to watch everyone go, "Okay, what's going on? Are you giving? All right. Should I? Should I? No one else is giving. Should I give?" But when you see someone raise a hand, you
can see someone across the table. I see Robert shaking his head. You can literally see someone across the table and they're like, "Oh, will they give a thousand?" I'm in. Me too. Yeah, right. I'm ready. Count me in. I want to. But at the event, it is so important. I think yesterday we talked about, in the demo, about calling someone's name. Right. Savannah is very much a who's who. So when you hear- Most communities are. Yeah. When you hear that person's name, they're like, "Oh, okay. So Mr. Cu
rry is giving. I need to make sure that I give." You know what I mean? And so having those people pre-commit is so phenomenal in your event. But before getting to the event, let's talk about the ass of the pre-commitment. Yes, please. That is scary as hell. Sometimes. Can we just be honest? You go into the- At first, when we first tried it, I was going to people call. You know what I mean? And never forget somebody was like, "Yeah, go ask them for $25,000." What? How? And so it became an art, ri
ght? And building a true relationship, right? Figure out what the organization is about. Figure out what that person is about. And truly build that relationship with that person. And I remember, I never forget who was the guy that gave $10,000? Yeah, Mr. Chatham? Chatham? I can't remember his name, but he owns Chatham. Well, I forgot. Anyway. We'll get there. We'll send this podcast to him. Right. And so he was like, "You're not going to get it if you don't ask." Yeah. So a lot of times, that $1
0,000, that $50,000 ask is waiting on you. You just have to let your jitters go. You built this relationship. You've done the work. These people know who you are. They know that your company, your business is reputable, and they want to support. They're just waiting on you to ask them. So once you've done your homework, go in with the ask. What's really incredible about our friend is that he literally, we were in the room, we asked at $5,000 to kick off. And we had pre-committed $5,000 gifts. An
d he raised his hand and said, "Come here. Come here." And I said, "What's going on?" And he's doing this thing. Flashing hands. Yeah. He's like, "I'm like, "Hi, jazz hands. What's going on?" And so I went over and I walked up to him and I said, "What can I help you with?" He goes, "I'd like to give $10,000." And I said, "Okay. Well, we'll do that." Thank you. Everyone applauded. It was a big moment. And then I turned around and I said, "Would anyone else like to join him?" Because we should do
that anyway, right? And he said, he was like, "I'm just honored to be able to give this level." They were just so wonderful, so wonderful. But they believed in the work and that was what it was about. But we did, we pivoted and asked if anyone else wanted to join them in hopes that someone would. And then we were like, "You know what? It's okay. We're going to keep going and we're going to... We kept going." But that room exploded. With giving. Oh, with giving because they saw him give. And they
were like, "Oh, we can... Okay. Yeah, he's giving $10,000. We can all do a little more." And they did. Right. If he trusts Habitat, then we can trust Habitat. Even some of the lower donors jumped up. I mean, we had pre-committed donors that went higher because he did. And that was the real moment that was so great. So for friends who are listening that are nervous about making a pre-committed ask, a few recommendations. Know they're giving history. Because you can go and say, "You've previously
given $10,000 and I want to ask if we can count on you again." That's a powerful way to open that door to a big conversation. The second thing though, and we have a couple of folks that we work with that really map out their giving needs before their event. And when they know what their need is, they can go to donors and explicitly say, "We are looking for a lead gift at the $50,000 level and we're looking for two gifts to match it at the $25,000 level. Would you consider being one of those gif
ts?" So you just gave sort of a menu to your donor. So open-ended questions. And then the third tip that I have for you is when you are nervous about making an ask and you're having a conversation with someone and you make the ask, stop talking and listen to them. Because they're going to have to think about what you just said and then they're going to start to tell you their story about why they give, why they're invested, what they're invested in, and they're going to open up a whole door of p
ossibility for you. And I think that's the hardest thing to do when you're nervous, right? We're nervous about approaching someone about this and then we talk right over them and we never actually let them answer the question. So take that time because when you just pause and listen, they will open the doors for you about what's possible. - As an example, this year title sponsor, my board member walked me into the room with him. She said, "Zerik, I want you to tell him the story." I told him my
Habitat story and how I got here and what I was all about. He was interested more in me than Habitat and so I kept pivoting. Okay, this is Habitat. And so literally, when I said something or whatever about what it meant to me to work for Habitat for Humanity and his wife just put her hand on his hand and the moment he did that, he just burst out into tears. I said, "Well, this is our ask. We'd like you to be the title sponsor." And so she did that and he started crying. He said, "Well, let me te
ll you about my story." He said, "Many people feel like I'm a millionaire because I'm a millionaire. Like I was just born into it." He said, "But what many people didn't know was that I didn't even know I was poor and I did a lot of things to try to help myself and help my family. And it was a struggle for me to get to where I'm at now. And I wish that I knew about a program like Habitat for Humanity that could have helped me along the way to get to where I am now. And I want to be a part of tha
t change." And it was all because I left the ask on the table and I shut up. I just hush. Sit back. Tell them and hush. And that moment was a true testament of what you just said, is that like, don't think we have to over talk people. "Oh, you don't want to do 10,000? Okay, well, we have a... Don't run down the levels. If you want them to be at $50,000, if you wanted to be at 10,000, tell them what you want and then sit back. Chill out." That's our new t-shirt right there. Sit back and chill out
. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I love it. I have been in the receiving seat of an ask like that, where the ask was something that I couldn't possibly do. But because the person on the other side sat back, we were able to have a conversation and think of all of the ways we could work together, both with a donation, but also with other resources and time and energy and expertise. So the sit back sometimes yields the yes, and sometimes it yields a whole other possibility of ways to partner togethe
r. But it's still a yes. Yeah. Yes. It is still a yes. Yeah. And it may not be that amount that year, but because you have an opportunity to start building that trust, you could be planting a seed that will work for harvest for years to come. Yep. You talked... I want to jump into the access question because I think that that's really important, which you talked about the fact that you have a huge diversity of audience in your event. And I think events are really expensive and events historicall
y have had sort of an have-have-not relationship, right? Those who can buy the $500 ticket are the folks in the event. How do you plan your event so that you create access, that you bring a diverse audience to the table? What kind of outreach, what kind of design does that look like for you? Yeah. So I will say that, of course, at a fundraising event, you're trying to figure out how to raise funds. But one of the things I learned here at the second conference was that sometimes that steady $50 a
month is much more than that big $25 one time and it never come back again. Yeah. So cultivating those lower levels is just as important as it is with your title sponsor or your silver or gold level sponsorships. When it comes to a fundraising event, I always try to save a portion of tickets for folks who can't afford it but need to be in the room. Who could tell the story, who could connect with people that I can't connect with because that's not my story, right? I want people who are particip
ating in our programs to be there. I want people who sit on my committees to be there because it's important that they not just hear the story of Habitat for Humanity from the lens of the CEO, but the story of Habitat for Humanity from people who volunteer on the construction site, who are making the decisions or the people who are coming into the program. And for folks who are preparing to be at the event for the following year. So making that allowance in your budget to make sure that you have
people who can sit there at that event. Yeah. You can help curate that room in a different way. Yeah. We have an organization that we partnered with that they allocate a hundred tickets for their clients to be in the room. And they do that by setting the ticket price for ticket buyers higher. They also ask their sponsors to pay it forward and sponsor clients to be in the room. And then when they contact their clients, they invite them to be their guests. It's not a, we have free tickets we're g
iving away. It is we would like to invite you to be our guest. We would like to host you, which is different. You know, there's a different message there and it creates a real access point because it's built into, like you said, the allocation and the plan for their budget. Yeah, I think that's great. So there's a lot of advice about out there about how to raise money. We have a lot of it, but Zarek, I'm interested in what you would tell first time fundraisers, veteran fundraisers. What risk wou
ld you tell them to take? To believe in yourself. You're not here by happenstance, right? Somebody saw this light, this fire in you. And you believe in yourself enough to apply for the position that you're in. Believe in yourself that the dream that you have can truly become a reality. Take the risk, try it out, go back and assist. Love it. Beautifully said. Well, joy is what you bring with you. You emanate joy. You both do in so much of your work. How important does that in showing up for your
about how does that impact your fundraising when you bring that joy into the room? If you're not having fun, nobody else is. So they don't have the photo, but I was getting down that night. You hear me? You, the one of the first, the first year when I told you we hit a hundred thousand dollars, there's a picture. He hugged me so tight and goes, Oh my gosh, he gave me the biggest hug. And then that's it. There's the picture. Hugging me. And literally he jumped back and was on the dance floor and
down and shimmy it. It was amazing. He went from gratitude to joy and just celebrated. And it was beautiful. You do that. You bring joy everywhere you go. And it was wonderful. Everyone danced on the dance floor. We had a great time. It was, it was a fun event and everyone was having fun. I truly believe that, you know, life is a party and you can be on, you can be a wall flower if you want to, but if you want to party with me, we're going to be in the middle of the floor. And when I mean the mi
ddle of the floor, I mean in every aspect of it, right? If I'm involved in affordable housing, I just left our state capital advocating for a habitat for humanity. We have a huge project. Hyundai is coming to our area. And so I'm like, Hey, you guys are bringing employees. Then you guys need to invest in affordable housing, you know? And so I'm like, I'm in the middle of the floor of all of it because that's what I believe in. Yeah. Well, we ask all of our guests the same closing question becaus
e we think the impact of gathering people together is really powerful. So we ask everyone to join us in the fundraising elevator and to head up to the penthouse of the party is and tell us about something that made an event memorable for you. Oh man. I remember going to the, the, uh, Glen County CBB, um, uh, gala and it was at the Klorshta on C Island and they had this very, very long cocktail hour. And I was like, how much liquor can we really drink? You know? And so I was ready to sit down, yo
u know, my, my, my tuxedo was a little tight. So I was like, all right, I'm ready to take this button off before it pop off. But, um, they opened the door and oh my God, the lighting was amazing. They had, um, and if you ever been to the Klorshta, look it up on your phones. It's, it's, it's already beautiful. But then they had these beautiful trees, uh, that represented our, our coastline and they had uplighting and the table was set perfectly. The music was phenomenal. I like when you take both
the old and new and mix it together. So they had like an orchestra playing today's music and I was like, yes, this is the party for me. The screens and everything were moving and there was just like, you know, it was, it was, it was an ambiance that had never been set before before. And one of the things when they served the food, like we had tables of 10, they had 10 servers coming up at the very same time. And, and, and rhythm, they all put the food down and the rhythm, they all took the food
up and it was just like, like, this is where I belong and how much am I giving today? You know what I mean? All of it. Leaving it off. Yes. Please max out my credit card. Thank you. We'll figure out how to make it up the next couple of months. But it was the ambiance that was set. It made me feel very relaxed in the room and I was tuned in, zeroed in to whatever was going on. When you take care of the person who's attending your event, like, now they can focus on what it is. They're not worried
about the children and not worried about the wife or the husband, you know, whoever they worried about. It's between you and them, baby. And that's, that's all that matters at that time. Well, we have just about a minute left. So Kelly, I want to hop back in the elevator with you and head down to the boiler room where the toolbox is and ask you what is one tool you think every fundraiser should have in their tool chest? Well, you know, Zarek said it a minute ago, and that is believe in yourself
. Believe in your work, believe in yourself, belief will take you far. And, you know, one of my favorite events just real quickly, if we can go up to the penthouse again for a second, was being at your event. It was, it was magic. It was magic on that floor and watching all those folks gather. I'm glad, I'm glad we were able to capture it because it was such a beautiful event and it brought so much joy. I had to take a little of that home. So I think that belief in yourself and making sure that
you are investing in your organization, invest, look at things as an investment. Don't look at it as an expense. Invest in your organization because you're worth it. You're worth it. Yep. We are so fortunate that you are in this sector. Zarek, we are so fortunate we get to be in this space with you. But if folks want to reach out, how do they get hold of you? Yeah. So by day, I am the CEO for the Coastal Empire Habitat for Humanity. And recently last July, I started a consultant business. It's c
alled Samples of Knowledge, LLC. Samples of Knowledge, LLC. I love that name. And so my email address is samplesofknowledgeatoutlook.com. Great. And I love to help anybody kind of cultivate the events or cultivate any fundraising ideas they may have. Love it. Kelly, how do folks get a hold of you? You can find me at artisanauctions.com and click the little orange arrow in the upper right hand corner. It'll get you to our get started page. You can contact us. We'd be happy to help you. And on soc
ial media, find me all over. Great. Well, you have a book we want to make sure folks know about. We're going to put a link in the show notes so folks can find it. The book on fundraising auctions. Thank you both for being here. Let's have a big round of applause for our special guests. Thank y'all. Thanks, everyone. Thank you, Sam and Kristin. Thank you. Have a great day. Thanks for being here. The fundraising elevator is produced in partnership with Swaim Strategies at the studios of the AV dep
artment. The program is produced by April Clark and directed by Steve Osburn with audio engineering and original music by DuWayne Andersen and Heidi Christensen. Video production by Chris Peterson, Whitney Gomes and Nathan Bouquet. Video editing by Steve Osburn. Graphic design by Pendulum Creative Group and support from Sophia Keller, John Liles and Andy Dowsett. At Elevate, we believe in bringing people together. Our online learning platform for fundraising events has webinars, workshops, downl
oadable tools and more designed to save you time and stress when planning your next event. We're getting nonprofit, development and event planning professionals the tools and ideas they need to create events that inspire donors and raise more money. So join us at elevatenonprofit.com. The link is also in our show notes. The fundraising elevator is recorded at the AV department in Portland, Oregon. For years, they've been our trusted partner, delivering exceptional audio visual production and vid
eography for nonprofits. In 2020, they transformed into a dynamic live streaming studio, producing more than 900 virtual and hybrid events. Now, we embark on an exciting journey together to bring you this podcast. Seeking the best in live events, video production and live streaming? We proudly recommend our friends at the AV department. Link in the episode description. Loving the fundraising elevator but wondering how you can talk to Sam and Kristen? Well, now's your chance to do it. Book one-on
-one consulting time with Swain Strategies experts, Sam, Kristen and Mary and get all your event questions answered. Our team has you covered on strategic planning, fundraising strategy, storytelling, data tools and registration support. Get the tools and the help you need to make the most impact at your fundraising event. Book at elevatenonprofit.com. The link is also in our show notes.
Comments
Zerik… you bring so much wisdom!